Temptation and War

Yesterday I had a small exciting moment where I thought: I'm just going to jump and trust that You will catch me.

I was looking out of my window at work at the water and the stingrays jumping, and the land on the other side of the harbor, and thinking about Jesus being tempted in the wild places. Adam was formed in the wilderness, and placed in the garden; the garden was tainted by sin, and humankind was banished from it, and sent out back into the wilderness, and we've been trying to make gardens ever since in all sorts of places. Satan tempted Jesus in the desert place by offering Him the world, all the earth and all things in it, right then and there - if He would only worship the tempter. Jesus turned the accuser down, and took back the wilderness for humanity. It's not a place we have to wander in, lost and lonely, any more. But while I was looking out of my window, captivated by the incredible beauty of the day, I thought: You could have had all this, right then. But You chose the temptation in the desert (redeeming the wilderness for Adam), the drops of blood in the garden (redeeming the beautiful places for Eve), and the agony of death (redeeming fellowship with God, tearing the veil and allowing us into the holy place) for love. For love of me, and every other human ever conceived.

I'm so glad that He knows who I am, even when I have these strange moments when I'm just not sure who I want to be. He is the ultimate life coach, always seeing the potential and possibility, having the vision for the finished product and the whole person when I am bowed down by everything I'm not.

What a rag-tag bunch of ragamuffins we are, the human race, strung along by our own hearts and worn out by a world striving ever for immortality! How close we are...if we only knew!

We HAVE to go to war for the souls of our generation, of our world. We are destroying ourselves, eating away at the mechanisms of everything that holds us together. Every one of us is in some way broken, buried, bruised and bleeding, and hiding so well. Each of us an intricately made part of the whole, intimately known and intimately loved, and leaving an incomparable and unassessable hole in the world when we go. We have to go to war for our fellow men and women...or we are lost.